Dick Armey, Big Shot

Later, in North Carolina, we sat down to dinner, and he said: “You ever see that Danny DeVito movie, I think it was Danny DeVito, where he says big shots never order off the menu? They just say what they want.” We were at an On the Border, a Tex-Mex restaurant chain and not the type of place I imagine many big shots patronize, but he pushed the menu aside without reading it and told the waiter what he wanted the kitchen to cook up for him.

Tragically, we don’t get to find out what he ordered. Personally I have a weakness for kinda shitty Tex-Mex food. But surely part of the reason you don’t need to look at the menu at a place like this is that the menu is completely predictable. Walking into an Indian restaurant and ordering tandoori chicken without looking at the menu doesn’t make you a big shot, it just means you’ve figured out that Indian restaurants all carry this dish.

At Tex/Mex place is exactly the restaurant where this might be a good idea, because they likely have all the ingredients to make a real taco but instead offer that disgusting hard-shell-and-ground-beef concoction.

The only “kinda shitty” Tex-Mex food is from franchised restaurants. Once they go franchise, authentic, ethnic look and taste are gone. Local restaurants with a Tex-Mex menu are a joy. And Tex-Mex from a roadside stand is the best. Ever.